TECHNOLOGY
MongoDB CEO Departs After Less Than a Year to Lead Meta's New Enterprise AI Push
Chirantan "CJ" Desai is leaving MongoDB to head Meta's newly created Enterprise Platform division, sending MongoDB shares down 18% and prompting an interim CEO search.
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Meta Platforms has hired away MongoDB chief executive Chirantan "CJ" Desai to lead a new division aimed at bringing the social media giant's artificial intelligence tools to corporate customers, the companies confirmed Monday.
MongoDB shares fell 18% in morning trading after the announcement, as Desai departs less than a year into his tenure as CEO of the database software provider. Dev Ittycheria, whom Desai succeeded, has been named interim CEO while MongoDB searches for a permanent replacement.
Brokerage Piper Sandler said in a note that the market reaction appeared overdone. "While the departure is disappointing, we believe MongoDB remains well-positioned strategically," the firm wrote.
Meta said Monday it will house its AI models, agents and business tools under a new unit called Meta Enterprise Platform, which will include its recently launched Muse assistant, Meta Business Agent and coding tools. Muse, introduced earlier this month, is a personal AI agent built to handle tasks such as shopping, booking travel, sending emails and making payments on behalf of users. It has climbed quickly in Apple's App Store and Google Play rankings, with some analysts calling it potentially the biggest U.S. app launch since ChatGPT's debut in November 2022 helped ignite the current AI boom.
In his new role as chief enterprise platform officer, Desai will report directly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and will be responsible for turning Meta's AI technology into products and services that businesses can deploy internally.
Before joining MongoDB, Desai led product and engineering at Cloudflare and spent nearly eight years at ServiceNow, where he served as president and chief operating officer. MongoDB provides database software that businesses use to build and run applications, with tools spanning data management, search, analytics and AI.